Watchtower Is Desperately Trying To Stop JW's Questions

A few decades ago, a 12-year-old girl died obeying a rule that the governing body reversed about a month ago. Now every Jehovah's Witness on Earth is being told that if they notice mistakes like that, the kind that cost children their lives, that is the work of the devil. It is hard to believe that is a coincidence.

The Watchtower study article "You Can Win the Battle" tells Witnesses that a critical, cynical view of the people running things is Satan influencing them. I read all four study articles in the August 2026 study edition and went back through more than 40 years of what the Watchtower has said about criticism, doubt, and its own mistakes. This is not a one-off. It is a 40-year system that makes sure mistakes are only ever noticed and fixed from the top down, never from the rank and file.

What Paragraph 3 of "You Can Win the Battle" Says

Look at paragraph 3 of the article:

Satan hopes that their example will rub off on us and that we will develop a critical cynical view of our friends and Jehovah's organization and turn on them.

So having a critical, cynical view of the people who are running things is the work of the devil. That is the lesson. Hold it up next to something the same organization printed in 2017, which I have referenced many times. The study edition of the Watchtower said:

The governing body is neither inspired nor infallible. Therefore, it can err in doctrinal matters or in organizational direction.

They admit they can be wrong and can make mistakes. But if you notice that they're wrong, that's the devil.

This lands just one month after the governing body made red blood cells and platelets a matter of personal conscience, effectively opening up the vast majority of blood transfusions for Jehovah's Witnesses. Many people died following the old rule. Now there is a new rule that could potentially have kept them alive. And suddenly, if you notice that reversal and see a serious problem with it, you're from Satan.

Among the dead is a 12-year-old in 1993, Len Martinez. She died refusing packed red blood cells and platelets, which are now a matter of personal choice or conscience. The Awake magazine of 1994 told her story and praised her for it. Quite likely she would have lived longer had she been able to accept those blood cells.

Here is my read on why Witnesses are studying this material right now. If an organization admits it can make mistakes but doesn't want anyone to point them out, it only ever fixes itself on its own schedule. Nothing from outside can influence positive change. It is a top-down hierarchy, and that only works if the people underneath stay quiet and submissive rather than raising red flags. Nobody inside is supposed to ask why it took so long to reverse something that caused so many deaths, when they now admit the old rule about blood prohibition isn't found anywhere in the Bible.

I was born and raised in the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses and spent most of my life in it. I left about nine years ago. I sat through many articles just like this one, and I believed every word. I was a true believer. As we'll see in the very next article of the same issue, the men who wrote these rules don't even follow their own instructions on how to apologize when what they do causes harm.

What the Article Is Actually Saying

The article is more careful than it may seem on the surface. "You Can Win the Battle" is the second article in a two-part series. Last week's was called "Resist Satan's Tactics: Trust in Jehovah and in Jesus." This week's picks up with what it calls two more of Satan's tactics. In its own words:

He tries to break up our unity with our brothers and sisters, and he stirs up opposition in an attempt to distract or frighten us.

That sounds like ordinary church advice: be kind to each other, don't hold grudges. A lot of the article really is that. But look again at paragraph 3. Satan doesn't just want you to fight with your brothers. He wants you to develop a critical, cynical view of "our friends and Jehovah's organization." And the article cites Romans 16:17 right after saying that. If you were ever a Jehovah's Witness, you know that verse:

Now I urge you, brothers, to keep your eye on those who create divisions and causes for stumbling contrary to the teaching that you have learned, and avoid them.

That is not a verse about being nice to a spouse who forgot your anniversary. In Watchtower's hands, that verse describes apostates. It is cited in the elders manual as an offense that will form a judicial committee and get you kicked out and shunned if you don't repent and recant. It sits under the heading "Apostasy," item 42, "Causing divisions," and the first scripture it cites is Romans 16:17. So when this article talks about a critical view of people in the organization, it is connecting a verse used to describe apostates to the Witness who has a critical or questioning view of something people in the organization do.

The King Saul Illustration Leaves Out Half the Story

To illustrate, the article chooses King Saul. Saul became consumed with jealousy when he saw that David was more popular with the people than he was, and he turned on the man Jehovah had chosen. The hero of the story is Saul's son Jonathan, who in the article's words acknowledged Jehovah's will and supported David as Israel's next king.

Look at what the article is doing. The person who says anything critical is cast as jealous, murderous Saul, and the one Jehovah chose is the person being criticized, meaning the people in the organization or, by proxy, the organization itself. The faithful response is to do what Jonathan did: accept it and support it.

But the article leaves out a critical component of the story. Saul was also Jehovah's anointed. He was the sitting king, the one David would not touch because he was the king. David said:

It is unthinkable from Jehovah's standpoint that I should do such a thing to my lord, the anointed of Jehovah.

And Jonathan sided against the anointed of Jehovah, against his own father, King Saul. He argued David's case to his father's face: Why should he be put to death? What has he done? And Saul hurled the spear at him.

So the actual story is not the way the article pitches it. The man the article calls loyal Jonathan is the one who stood up to the anointed king of Israel when he was wrong. The Witness who notices something wrong with the organization and speaks out about it is not missing from this story. They are the hero of it. The article fails to mention that.

How Watchtower Talks When It Isn't Being Careful

Someone defending the article would say it is only talking about petty disputes among the brothers in the congregation, not about leadership or the governing body. On the surface, that is true. The rest of paragraph 7 is about exactly that: differences in opinions, personalities, race, or culture.

So let me show you how the Watchtower uses the same language when it isn't being careful. In 2022, at a circuit assembly, a talk on avoiding rotten words warned the audience about negative speech. Here is the line:

So we want to avoid critical, cynical or sarcastic speech about our brothers or the organization.

Almost the same words, only at the end he added "or the organization." So it isn't just about avoiding critical or cynical speech about your brothers and sisters. It is also about the organization itself. When the article says "friends in Jehovah's organization," by extension the Watchtower has always taught that this includes the organization too.

The September Watchtower even turns the same idea into a question for self-examination:

Do my conversations with fellow believers tend to be negative, cynical, even sarcastic?

The point of all three, the article, the talk, and the self-examination question, is not to stop you from being cruel to your brothers and sisters. It is to make you suspicious of your own criticism so you don't say it out loud.

"Soldiers Need to Have Confidence in Their Leaders"

A line in last week's article, the first in the series, is even more revealing. Look at paragraph 2:

In the midst of a battle, soldiers need to have confidence in their leaders. If they were to lose that confidence, they might act independently. This could cost them their lives.

That is a pretty direct statement. Losing confidence in your leaders would lead you to act on your own, and acting independently is what gets you killed. The article applies this to the Witness's confidence in Jehovah and Jesus. But in Watchtower's world, you don't get Jehovah and Jesus without the organization. The two are treated as almost equal in every way. If you leave the religion, you didn't just leave Jehovah's Witnesses; you left Jehovah. That is how they refer to it. Even if you kept your faith and just decided the organization was wrong about things you couldn't tolerate anymore, like children dying unnecessarily because they weren't allowed to take blood, and then all of a sudden they are allowed. Not in Watchtower's world. Leave the organization and you leave God and Jesus.

A governing body member explained this in a talk, which I'll come back to. He says new understanding comes by means of the Holy Spirit through "his channel, the faithful and discreet slave." The governing body is the channel. So when a Witness hears that soldiers need confidence in their leaders, they don't hear abstract theology about trusting God. They hear: trust the men who lead you, the governing body, because thinking for yourself could get you killed.

40 Years of Warning Against "Independent Thinking"

This is not a new idea. In January 1983, the Watchtower ran a section headed "Avoid Independent Thinking," which says:

From the very outset of his rebellion, Satan called into question God's way of doing things. He promoted independent thinking.

And how does independent thinking show up? In the article's words, a common way is by questioning the counsel that is provided by God's visible organization.

It isn't just ancient history, either. A July 2024 study edition listed the areas where a Witness could be vulnerable to temptation. The list: fear of men, independent thinking, a quick temper, or something else. Right in the middle sits independent thinking, in a list of things to guard against next to a bad temper. Thinking for yourself, having your own mind on things, is put in the same category as needing anger management. According to the organization, it is a weakness, and questioning the organization is how Satan gets into your head.

So when the Watchtower uses the battle metaphor, it isn't decoration or analogy. You are the soldier, the organization is your chain of command, and being independent is how soldiers die.

The 2017 Admission That Can't Be Acted On

Here is the obvious question. If the organization can be wrong, and it admits it can, what is a soldier supposed to do when he knows the orders are wrong and likely to get people hurt or killed?

That is where the 2017 admission comes in. I have shown it on the channel before, but it matters more here than almost anywhere else. In the February 2017 study edition, an article about who the faithful slave really is says the governing body is neither inspired nor infallible and therefore can err in doctrinal matters or in organizational direction. But right after that, it says the Watchtower Publications Index includes the heading "Beliefs Clarified," which lists adjustments in our scriptural understanding. I have told you the count before: that index catalogs more than 240 changes.

Then look at the very next paragraph:

The Holy Spirit has helped the governing body to grasp scriptural truths not previously understood.

It points back at that same list of changes and then says, "Surely no human deserves credit for discovering and explaining these deep things of God." Put those statements together and look at what they imply. When a teaching is wrong, that was just uninspired men who can make mistakes, and you shouldn't hold it against them. When they change the teaching, that's the Holy Spirit. And in the time before they got around to changing it, if you noticed it was wrong and said anything, that was Satan influencing you.

"Nor Is an Apology Needed"

In January 2024, governing body member Jeffrey Winder said the same thing on camera, with something added. Here is that part:

Well, we have the privilege to live during the last days where true knowledge was foretold to become abundant. But even still, it is released and made known at a pace that we can absorb, that we can handle, and that we can use. And we thank Jehovah for that. So this is what we know from the scriptures and from our own experience as well about how the light gets brighter in modern times. It comes about by means of the Holy Spirit through his channel of the faithful and discreet slave. He reveals it gradually and at a time that it is needed. Well, knowing this then we are not embarrassed about adjustments that are made, nor is an apology needed for not getting it exactly right previously. We understand this is how Jehovah operates. He reveals matters gradually when it is needed. And also the governing body is neither inspired nor infallible and so it can err in doctrinal matters or in organizational direction. The brothers do the best they can with what they have and what they understand at the time, but are happy if Jehovah sees fit to clarify matters and then that can be shared with the brotherhood. And when that happens, we understand it's because it's Jehovah's time for that to happen and we eagerly accept that.

Nor is an apology needed. I have played this clip many times and I'm sure I will play it many more. It is egregious that the leadership of Jehovah's Witnesses says it doesn't have to apologize when it changes its policies and doctrines, even though, as he doesn't say, the previous policy killed children. You don't have to apologize. You just have to accept it, fall in line, and move on like a good little soldier.

Both in print and on camera, they admit they can err in doctrine and make mistakes in direction. If you really believed that, and you were an honest person, what would you do the next time you read something in a publication that didn't line up with the Bible as you understand it? You'd say, "So, I think that's wrong." That is what you do when someone you know says something you believe is mistaken. And if they've been honest and humble, "Hey, I can make mistakes, so if you think something's wrong, be sure to let me know," that's what a friend says. That is not what the organization says. With the organization, you can check it, and if it doesn't hold up, you keep your mouth shut.

"Fight Against Independent Thinking"

If you think I'm exaggerating, the Watchtower said it itself in that same January 1983 issue. A few pages after "Avoid Independent Thinking," there is a section called "Fight Against Independent Thinking":

Yet there are some who point out that the organization has had to make adjustments before. And so they argue this shows that we have to make up our own mind on what to believe. This is independent thinking.

At the start of the next paragraph, it says such thinking is an evidence of pride.

Look at what that does to the Witness. The most natural, reasonable response, when someone admits they can make mistakes and then makes one, is to think, "Well, they've been wrong before, so I need to think about this myself." The Watchtower names that in advance, because it knows that's the most common reaction. It isn't reasoning, says the Watchtower. It's pride. It's independent thinking. It's how Satan gets you. They are trying to prevent the normal human response when someone has failed over and over: stop believing them and think for yourself. No, no, no, says Watchtower. That's from the devil.

The Cautionary Tale of Emanuel

In July 2006, the Watchtower described a Witness who reacts badly to adjustments he doesn't like. "Pride may play a role," it says, and "some fall into the trap of independent thinking." The cautionary example is a man called Emanuel:

Emanuel, for instance, was a witness who found fault with some things he read in publications of the faithful and discreet slave.

If you were used to reading a magazine and it started printing things you really disagreed with, you'd naturally stop reading it. That is what Emanuel did. He stopped reading the literature and told the elders he didn't want to be a Jehovah's Witness anymore. Again, a natural response when you disagree with their policy and theology. In the article's words, he eventually admitted his mistake and was reinstated. Remember that he admitted his mistake. That will matter in a moment.

The next paragraph tells any Witness with doubts what to do instead of what Emanuel did:

Let us not be impatient. The faithful slave may eventually publish something that answers our questions and clears up our doubts.

That is the whole system. They admit they can err, but a Witness who finds fault with what they read is the cautionary tale. That's independent thinking. Wait for headquarters to fix it. When that 2006 article was printed, Len Martinez had been dead almost 13 years, and according to the Watchtower, red cells and platelets were still God's law, forbidden.

Can a Witness Ask Questions?

A Witness might say I have it backwards: "Nobody's saying you can't ask questions. Of course you can take your concerns to the elders as long as you're respectful. The article is warning against a bad attitude, not honest questions." I wish that were true. I would love for it to be true. It isn't.

Notice what last week's article tells Witnesses to check in paragraph 14:

We should also be careful not to believe everything we read or hear that is put out by the world.

"The world" in Watchtower theology means everything outside the walls of the Kingdom Hall. When it comes to what you read or believe, it means anything not published by the Watchtower. The cure it offers is to study the Bible and "our publications." The publications are like the answer key to a test. They are never the thing you have to check for accuracy. The paragraph ends by citing Acts 17:11 and the Bereans. Hold on to that; we'll come back to it.

To answer the objection, look at Watchtower's own description of how its mistakes get fixed. In that same 2024 talk, Jeffrey Winder walked through the process step by step. Listen to where he says the questions come from:

And so we can see the process is not intended to be a mystery or to be overly secretive. And the process today is not much dissimilar than that. In 2010, the Watchtower explained it this way. It said, "When the time comes to clarify a spiritual matter in our day, Holy Spirit helps the faithful and discreet slave to discern deep truths that were not previously understood. The governing body as a whole considers adjusted explanations. What they learn they publish for the benefit of all." End quote. So generally the process happens this way. First of all a question comes up. And so it could be that a governing body member in his personal study or his personal Bible reading notices something that then raises a question. Or it could be that a question comes up during the preparation or translation of spiritual food that requires more consideration. World events might put the spotlight on a particular prophecy that then gets closer attention. So in one way or another a question comes up and that question is then put on the governing body's agenda for discussion and the question is does this warrant additional research. The brothers are not making a final decision on what the new understanding will be, just asking does it warrant additional research.

So Winder says that a governing body member's personal study, translation work, or world events are what might eventually cause a change. Notice what he never mentions: a Witness in a congregation who noticed something was wrong and wrote in about it. If that is one of the ways questions get onto the governing body's agenda, he didn't bother to mention it.

Acts 15 Says the Opposite

What makes Winder's talk stranger is that he uses Acts 15 as the model for how change comes about. Acts 15 deals with the circumcision question in the first century. Winder describes it as much intense discussion where the brothers felt free to express themselves respectfully. But read how Acts 15 actually starts. Verse 1:

Now some men came down from Judea and began to teach the brothers: "Unless you get circumcised according to the customs of Moses, you cannot be saved."

Verse 2:

But after quite a bit of dissension and disputing by Paul and Barnabas with them, it was arranged for Paul, Barnabas, and some of the others to go up to the apostles and elders in Jerusalem regarding this issue.

The question of circumcision didn't come from a governing body member's personal study, translation work, or world events. It came from an argument that happened out loud in a congregation. Paul and Barnabas disputed with the teachers who came down from Judea saying everyone had to be circumcised, and they had that debate in public. When the apostles and elders in Jerusalem wrote back, they said those men had caused you trouble and that "we did not give them any instructions." So Paul and Barnabas had it right, and the dispute is what got the question settled.

That is the system Watchtower holds up as its model. It's true that Paul was an apostle, so he isn't a stand-in for a publisher in the back row. But in that model, the question reached Jerusalem because somebody was debating it out loud in a congregation first. In Watchtower today, "quite a bit of dissension and disputing" in a congregation is what Satan is instigating, not what carries questions up to the governing body.

So can a Jehovah's Witness raise an honest question? Sure. But based on what Watchtower says, both in the elders handbook and in Winder's own talk, that won't send the question up to the governing body. The elders rule book says that if you start questioning what the Watchtower teaches and don't repent and recant, you can be kicked out and shunned. You become Emanuel, the person with a bad attitude who rejects the Watchtower because of it. And Emanuel eventually did repent and recant and got reinstated, which means he was kicked out and shunned. You don't get reinstated if you haven't been shunned.

Justice, Protest, and the Courtroom Double Standard

If an honest and sincere Witness can't bring up a doctrinal mistake through the congregation without being labeled Emanuel, what happens when the mistake isn't a doctrine but an injustice, something that caused harm? This week's article has a rule for that too, and it exposes a double standard around protest that has existed for a very long time.

Look at paragraph 9:

We could become so consumed by the desire to get justice, to be vindicated, or to take revenge that we lose sight of the all-important kingdom preaching work.

Paragraph 13:

Government authorities also deserve our respect, even if they enact laws that restrict our freedom of worship or if they make life hard for us in some other way.

It says Satan likely hopes we will react negatively or critically to those decisions, and then:

In the world, people mount protests against decisions they do not like. That type of action is not for Christians.

And paragraph 15:

We would soon expend a lot of our time and energy if we tried to correct all the injustices that we see or suffer today.

So when a Witness encounters injustice, their job isn't to do something about it. It's to be patient. Don't chase justice. Don't seek vindication. By all means, don't protest. Don't react critically to the government. Wait for Jehovah and the Kingdom to fix it.

To be fair, you're probably thinking what I immediately thought: Watchtower goes to court all the time over what it claims are injustices against it. That's true, and Watchtower has never said it won't go to court. It says so openly. In July 2025, a life story in the study edition put it like this:

When legal matters cannot be resolved amicably, we defend and legally establish the good news in court.

A lawsuit isn't the same thing as protesting in the street. There is a real distinction, and I'll grant it. But look at what the Watchtower corporation has done with that exception. It sued Norway over its funding and registration after they were revoked over the shunning issue, especially toward minors, and it won in the Supreme Court of Norway this April. It also sued Japan over child abuse guidelines that covered refusing blood for children and called that neglect. And, as I covered in a recent video, in France, Watchtower's association sued a journalist named Jade Serrano and the magazine she wrote for, Nao, over a 2021 investigation into how child sexual abuse is handled among Jehovah's Witnesses. Watchtower lost in 2023 and lost the appeal in 2024. In January, France's highest court threw out its final appeal without even looking at it.

You see what's happening. The rank-and-file member who suffers injustice is told not to become consumed by the desire to get justice, to be vindicated. But the corporation spent more than four years in French courts trying to be vindicated against a reporter who dared to write down victims' stories.

Protest Letters Are Fine, When Headquarters Organizes Them

It's not just lawsuits. The article says you shouldn't protest either. But the Watchtower itself has described its own representatives doing exactly that. The second president of the Watchtower, Joseph F. Rutherford, is described in a March 2001 Watchtower as sending Hitler a letter of protest, followed by some 20,000 letters and telegrams of protest sent to Hitler by Jehovah's Witnesses in 50 countries. And in March 2017, according to JW.org's own newsroom, the governing body of Jehovah's Witnesses invited the worldwide brotherhood to write letters of appeal to government authorities at the highest level in Russia.

I'm not criticizing the brothers and sisters who wrote those letters. I don't think that was a bad thing. I'm pointing out who organized it: the Watchtower, which speaks of it highly. Yet this same study article says you shouldn't protest.

There is a current example, too. In France, the prefect of Hauts-de-Seine, the government official over the department where the two main Witness associations are registered, opened a review of those associations' legal status because of the shunning policy. Last December, the newspaper Le Parisien reported that Witness leaders thanked members for writing to the prefect. They wrote to a government official about a decision they didn't like. We call that a protest, to protect their tax status. And the same week this article was studied in Kingdom Halls, pictures of a document went up on the exJW subreddit. It was the instructions French Witnesses were given. Look at its title, and the French word at the end: suggestions for protest letters. It tells the reader they can protest the situation by letter, or as it puts it more strongly, with the official French sworn witness form, and it supplies the prefect's name and address.

So Watchtower can't claim Witnesses shouldn't protest. It isn't saying don't protest and it isn't saying don't criticize. It's saying don't protest unless we tell you to, and don't criticize us. When the target is a government threatening Watchtower's tax status, the protest letters are encouraged, organized by the Watchtower itself, and written up with pride in its own publications. When the target is the organization, that same impulse is a critical, cynical view that Satan wants you to develop. Criticism is absolutely fine as long as you only aim it where headquarters tells you to.

Everything Is Satan, Except the Organization's Own Errors

Across both articles in this study series, Satan is behind your doubts, social media, arguments in the congregation, your persecution, government decisions that negatively affect the organization, and the urge to desire justice. Watchtower must have realized on some level how ridiculous that sounds, so it included a footnote in last week's article:

Satan does not directly cause all the trials we face, but he is responsible for the spirit of the world, which influences opposers to mistreat God's people. So whether directly or indirectly, Satan is behind many of the challenges we face in our spiritual warfare.

That is an unfalsifiable claim, a logical fallacy. You can never disprove it. If a doubt shows up, that's Satan. If a critic shows up, that's Satan. But notice the one cause that never makes any of the lists. No matter how much harm it caused, no matter how many people died, no matter how many brothers went to prison over it before Watchtower suddenly changed its position, that error in doctrine or policy was not from the devil.

The Blood Reversal, Step by Step

Look at what that rule does to an actual question that came up just last month. On September 18th, in governing body update number six, hosted by Jeffrey Jackson, a current governing body member, he announced that four primary blood components, red cells, white cells, platelets, and plasma, are now a matter of personal choice or conscience. Whole blood, he said, is still banned, but the components, which make up most transfusions, have become a Witness's personal decision. Jackson said this about the old position:

This position has protected Jehovah's people spiritually and physically.

And about the new rule, he said the congregation will not get involved in that decision and individual Christians should not judge others.

But go back 26 years to June 2000, and again to June 2004. The Watchtower said Jehovah's Witnesses hold that accepting whole blood or any of those four primary components violates God's law. And the current elders manual, the 2025 edition, has a heading for it: "Willingly and unrepentantly accepting blood." That got you kicked out and shunned. You were immediately considered as having disassociated yourself, having left the organization yourself, even if that was not your intention. For decades these components were supposedly God's law, and then all of a sudden they weren't.

That policy had real and terrible harm attached to it. The May 22, 1994 issue of Awake told the story of Len Martinez, who was only 12 years old, in a hospital in Fresno, California, dying from leukemia. The magazine says the doctors treating Len determined that packed red blood cells and platelets should be transfused. Len said she wanted no blood or blood products, that she had been taught God forbids that. She died on September 22, 1993, in her mother's arms. Maybe transfusion wouldn't have saved her, but maybe it would have prolonged her life. If it did save her, she'd be 45 right now. Over what? Red cells and platelets, which as of last month are a matter of personal conscience.

When Len said she had been taught that God forbids that, it was Watchtower that taught her. The Bible didn't. And we know the Bible didn't, because Jackson admitted that the Bible doesn't discuss the use of blood components in medical or surgical care.

The Nurse Who Was Right in 2010

Stop and think about a Jehovah's Witness back in, say, 2010. She's a nurse. She read Len's story in Awake as a teenager. She looked at the fractions that were already allowed, and she says out loud in her own congregation, "You know what? Red cells and platelets should be a matter of conscience too, because the line Watchtower uses doesn't make any sense." What would the Watchtower have labeled her in 2010? Disagreeing with God's law as the organization teaches it. A cynical, critical view. And if she kept at it, it gets worse. The elders manual, in the same apostasy section, has an item called "Deliberately spreading teachings contrary to Bible truth," and by Bible truth, of course, they mean whatever Watchtower teaches. Look at what it says:

If a Christian deliberately spreads false teachings, this may be or may lead to apostasy. If he does not respond after a first and second admonition, a committee should be formed.

So that nurse, that sister with the best of intentions, would get two warnings and then a judicial committee, and she would be kicked out and shunned if she didn't repent and recant for saying in 2010 what the governing body said last month on camera. In that update, Jackson admits that some components make up a smaller percentage of whole blood than certain fractions some Christians might already be willing to accept. That means, by their own description, the line never made sense. But if anyone called them out for it, they were kicked out and shunned.

"Smile and Agree"

So what is a current Witness supposed to do when people bring this to their attention? A week after the update, governing body member Jody Jedele gave a morning worship talk about how the light gets brighter. Here is his advice for people confronted with all the changes Watchtower is making:

Lessons: Jehovah may clarify a matter by not doing something that was expected. And we don't get frustrated. Whether it's a new understanding or an adjusted understanding, it's all good. The light is getting brighter. The fact is if there were never an adjustment, then we should be worried. That means the light wouldn't be getting brighter. So if anyone ever asks or says, "Well, you know, you folks made another change." Smile and agree. It's a reminder that Jehovah is making the path brighter for his people.

The only permitted response when someone asks about a harmful policy that Watchtower suddenly reverses is to smile and agree. You're allowed to notice that they changed, but not that they were wrong before, and not to call out the harm that came from it. You're definitely not allowed to have noticed before they did and ask them to fix it.

The governing body did admit it can make mistakes, but that only works in one direction. Only they can discover their own mistakes. Only they can set the schedule for fixing anything. Only they can announce changes as new light. The person who saw it first, who had it right years before, gets no credit and no apology. They don't get reinstated. They don't get their family back. Nobody stopped shunning them. They certainly don't get to say "I told you so," at least not out loud. In the organization's eyes, the nurse who knew and called it out was critical. Her sin was disloyalty, not being right too early. She gets kicked out because she didn't obey, and Watchtower is all about obedience and control.

One Day to Repent and Recant on JW Talk

We can watch this work in real time. There is a members-only Jehovah's Witness forum, a private one called JW Talk. A week after the blood change, a brother asked the question this whole article is about: do we really need to explain away every single change the GB makes? Couldn't we simply acknowledge that it was a correction of a mistaken idea? He quoted the 2017 article saying they can make mistakes, and followed the logic: this means that before the update, the GB was going beyond the things that are written.

The very first response said there is a difference between a mistake and maturity. Another reply said it concerned them that some had said the governing body were mistaken in their past understanding of the use of blood, and that this is not true. And what did the original poster, who had followed the logic, do the very next day? He said, "I thoroughly agree with you on this point." It took one day for that Witness to repent and recant and take back what he said among Jehovah's Witnesses. That is how the system works, and how Watchtower maintains control.

That part gets to me the most, because I lived inside that silence. I've told this story before. I was walking the aisles at a district convention in Fort Worth, Texas, holding my very small son to keep him from fussing, and I was listening to a speaker explain who would and wouldn't be resurrected after Armageddon, knowing in my gut that what he was describing was unjust. That couldn't be right. There were thousands of people in the seats of that auditorium, and not a single one I could have told my thoughts to without them drawing back in fear, thinking I had been possessed by the devil.

That silence doesn't only stop people who turn out to be right later. It stops everyone from finding out who's right and who isn't. In a healthy group, if you have an objection, you say it out loud, and the people around you, hopefully people who care about you, discuss it. Is what you're saying right? Are you missing something? Are you mistaken? That's how wrong ideas get corrected. That's not how it works here. When a critical view of the organization gets labeled as coming from Satan, people are scared never to say anything. So nobody's wrong ideas ever get corrected and nobody's right ideas ever get heard. But it does protect the people sitting on top.

The Hypocrisy of "An Appeal on the Basis of Love"

For even more proof that this silence protects the leadership, look at the very next article in the same magazine. Right after telling Witnesses not to be critical of the organization, Watchtower prints an article that teaches them how to admit they were wrong and correct a mistake. The irony is palpable.

The article is "An Appeal on the Basis of Love," the third study article in the issue. It is about Paul's letter to Philemon and the runaway slave Onesimus. The lesson drawn is that Onesimus admitted his mistake and did his part to reconcile with Philemon. You remember that phrase: he admitted his mistake. That is what Emanuel had to do after he stopped reading the magazines and decided to leave the religion because he disagreed. Admitting the mistake is always the job of the rank-and-file member who disagrees with them.

Then paragraph 11 tells the Witness how to apologize:

Start with a sincere apology. Be willing to listen to the other person and acknowledge his feelings. Accept responsibility for your mistake. Avoid justifying your actions or shifting the blame. Doing so can weaken an apology, prolong a dispute, or even make things worse.

That is genuinely good advice. It is just insanely hypocritical for them to print it for the rank and file, because they never do it themselves.

Start with the sincere apology. In the blood update, did Jackson apologize? No. Were people harmed by the old policy? Absolutely. The credible estimate from AJWB was that over 30,000 Witnesses died because they refused blood transfusions. But Jeffrey Winder said on camera that an apology isn't needed for not getting it right previously. Rules for thee.

The magazine also tells the rank and file to accept responsibility for the mistake. But the update doesn't call the old rule a mistake at all. It says, "This position has protected Jehovah's people spiritually and physically." If that's true, why did you change it? Watchtower tells the rank and file to avoid justifying their actions, but that Jackson sentence is exactly that: justifying the old rule. It's what Len was taught, and it's why she probably died sooner than she had to.

The Watchtower also says to avoid shifting the blame. But when changes come, how do they frame them? Jehovah is revealing things gradually, at a time when it is needed. That shifts the blame onto God. The delay is God's timing. It's his fault, never the governing body's. Jody Jedele did the same with 1914 in his September morning worship talk. He said that when the end didn't come and they weren't taken to heaven as they expected in 1914, Jehovah adjusted their expectations by not doing what they expected. The expectation belonged to the believers. The adjustment belonged to God. The leadership who made the claim about 1914 weren't at fault.

The Apology Question Quietly Removed From the Elders Manual

Here is a detail that drives the point home. For years, the elders manual gave judicial committees a list of questions to determine whether someone had sinned or was truly, sincerely repentant. One of those questions in the 2019 edition was:

Has he made amends, expressed willingness to do so, or apologized to those damaged by his sinful course?

That stayed in the manual all the way through April 2024. In the 2025 edition, the most recent one, it's gone. There is no mention of apologizing, no mention of making amends, and no mention of the people who were wronged.

Look at the timing. The manual gives no reason for the change, but it came out a year before the blood change, and at the annual meeting, Jedele said some things the Watchtower does have been in the works for years. Can I prove they took out the language about apologizing and making amends because they knew they were going to change the blood policy? No, I can't. But it is quite the coincidence, if it's a coincidence. It also means that, as of right now, the people who wrote "Start with a sincere apology" no longer ask someone who makes a mistake whether he apologized to the people he hurt.

The Philemon article has one more line you need to hear. It says Paul did not think he could just order Philemon around as if he were his master, and it tells the elders that as loving shepherds, they do not lord it over the flock. The rules always point downward. Members should apologize. Members shouldn't justify themselves. Members shouldn't order each other around. Members shouldn't be critical of each other. None of that is applied to the leadership at the top. The men who wrote it don't have to do any of it.

The Rule Is "Don't Be Critical of Us"

When you strip away the flowery language and the theological claims, the explanation is simple. The rule isn't really "don't be critical." That is not what they're telling Jehovah's Witnesses. The rule is don't be critical of us. Criticism is welcomed and encouraged when aimed at governments, at people they claim are apostates, or at the people of the world. It's Satan's work when you aim it back at headquarters. Unity in the Watchtower magazine doesn't mean agreeing. It means immunity for the men who sit at the top.

That matters because if somebody tells you they can be wrong, your honest, normal impulse is to check their work. That's what the admission is for. I've said it on this channel: you can look at all my references and check my work and tell me if I'm mistaken. I have read comments where people corrected my mistakes, and I corrected them in future videos. That is the whole point of being honest that you can make mistakes and don't know everything. If the governing body really meant it when they said they can make mistakes, they'd want you to check them, because that is how mistakes get caught before people get hurt by them.

But that's not the case. For every year between 2000, when they printed that it's absolutely against God's law to take any kind of major blood component, and last September, no one could say anything, even though the line didn't make sense. In my opinion, that's why the line never moved, and the only reason they changed it at all is that they came under fire from Japan.

The Bereans Were Told Not to Be Critical Either

Compare that to the Bible example, Acts 17:11, the verse last week's article cited: the Bereans, who accepted the word with the greatest eagerness of mind, carefully examining the scriptures daily to see whether these things were so. The Bereans checked Paul. They wanted to make sure he was right. It didn't matter that he was an apostle.

Witnesses will study that verse at the end of December in the October study edition of the Watchtower, which is already out. Here is what it says about the Bereans:

Those Bereans were not listening to Paul with a critical attitude.

And here is what it says that checking should look like today:

We follow along as the speaker reads to us from God's word. Thus, we can be confident that the speaker is telling us the truth.

So Watchtower's claim is that the Bereans weren't checking whether Paul was right; it was just to increase their confidence that he was right, which of course he was. Checking is redefined as confirming what you already know to be true.

The irony is that the same issue has a life story of a man who says he once accepted evolution without question, assuming that what was taught at school must be true. They present that as a mistake: he should have questioned whether it was based in facts. So questioning what you're taught is a virtue right up until your teacher is the Watchtower, at which point it becomes Satan's influence over you.

An admission of being fallible and not inspired, which nobody is allowed to act on, isn't humility. It's insurance. Truth doesn't need Romans 16:17 to protect it from questions. Only falsehood does. Only errors need that.

The last study article in this issue is called "Cherish the Privilege of Fearlessly Rendering Sacred Service." "Fearlessly" is the word that stood out to me. In the same magazine that compares a Jehovah's Witness to a soldier who could die for acting independently, they are told they can serve fearlessly. They just can't think fearlessly. That is unacceptable. That's from the devil.